


I'd do anything (to make you stay)

by demigodscum



Series: All Your Troubles [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Canon, Sad, pining i guess, this is so self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 00:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16587044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demigodscum/pseuds/demigodscum
Summary: Some endings have no beginnings.





	I'd do anything (to make you stay)

**Author's Note:**

> Octavia and I once had a conversation during which I mentioned my desire to write something with this song and she just encouraged me and asked for all the feels. Blame her (and me, I'm the one with the mood).
> 
> I might come back to edit errors, but if you read before then, sorry, whoops.
> 
> Title from No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine.

The midday Wakandan sun is unforgiving on what little skin she shows: hands, neck, face.

She’s been trotting around the battle-torn field for a while now, trying to pass time by scouting for any useful remains. Two Doras have been trailing her silently.

They didn’t say why, but Toni doesn’t need them to.

She knows.

Bruce had been relieved to see her alive. Thor had been mildly happy to see her after so long.

Everyone else had kept their distance. Everyone else distrusted her.

She could see it in their eyes, in the way their expressions screamed _this is your fault_ , in the way their bodies were positioned defensively.

She was always the one to blame for destruction, for death, for pain.

 _It doesn’t matter_ , she told herself. It has been that way from the very start, from the very moment she was born. That has never stopped her before—no reason why it should now.

Nobody is doing much of anything. Nobody knows what to do, how to prepare for whatever is coming, where to start.

She doesn’t either, but at least she has ideas.

They won’t listen to her though. For six years, they covered their ears and turned their backs on her.

So she does her thing, lets them do theirs.

The scattered leftovers are mostly innocuous fragments and components of the larger weapons. So far, nothing that will be of any use.

It’s fine, it doesn’t matter. This isn’t even her plan.

She walks, stops, crouches. Walks, stops, crouches. It’s mostly a mindless task that allows her to _do_ and _think_ , to keep both her body and her brain occupied. It’s the only way she can get a respite from the tremors that haven’t stopped in hours, from the ache in her left arm, from the hole at the center of her chest, from the burn emanating from it.

Until, to her astonishment, he shows up.

“What are you doing?”

Startled, she whirls around to face the voice from behind her.

There a few good feet between them, but the distance does nothing to abate the tension that crackles to life instantaneously, connecting them like a live wire. _Too much voltage_.

Toni is surprised that she didn’t hear him coming. Once upon a time, Steve had been obvious, unmissable. She supposes this is not Captain America anymore, supposes this is Nomad.

“Are you here to supervise me? Because that role is already taken. I’d hate for you to waste your time unnecessarily,” she mocks.

Steve sighs. “I’m not here to fight, Stark. I just want to know what you’re doing, whether I can help.”

It doesn’t escape her notice that she’s gone from _Toni_ to _Stark_ in the span of a couple of hours.

“Why?”

“You know I hate feeling useless.” She does. She knows that it irked him when he was a skinny, sick kid in Brooklyn. Knows that it irked him when he was a puppet for the government to use. Knows that it irked him when he was a step behind everyone else in the chaos that was the future.

The fact is, Toni knows too much about Steve, more than she ever wanted to.

She stares at him for another moment, then turns around to keep walking and says, “If you find anything interesting, show me.” Maybe it’s the haunted look in his gaze, the stooped line of his shoulders. Maybe it’s the tiny cluster of neurons right beside her amygdala—beside her anger center—that goes haywire whenever he’s close. Whatever it is, she lets him trudge along in a somewhat parallel line to hers.

 _Side by side_ , like they were for very brief moments in their relationship, but the gulf between them now is so wide that it really isn’t anything close to even that.

“Why did you have to say that?” Steve’s voice is low and hesitant, carrying over to where she stands only because their surroundings are so quiet. For a moment, Toni thinks she’s been mumbling aloud without realizing, but then she remembers how they’d left off this morning and figures he must be asking about that.

“Why did you have to lie to me?”

“God, we’re never getting past that, are we?” It sounds exhausted, like Steve already regrets having started a conversation.

She thinks maybe he regrets having started or continued every conversation they’ve ever had, if only because so few of those started and ended as conversations.

“I don’t know. Are you ever getting past Barnes?”

She can see already that this won’t be one of those.

“Why do you keep bringing him up? Can’t you leave him alone?”

She fears she doesn’t know any other way of being around him.

“I’m not doing anything to him.”

“He’s… he’s _dead_ , and—”

In a flash, she’s snarling at him, stalking closer and taking Steve by surprise, if the look on his face is any indication.

“They are _not_ dead.”

“Stark—”

“ _No_. I don’t particularly care what you and Barnes do or don’t do after this shit is over, but they are _not_ dead, you hear me?” She wishes she could say _I don’t particularly care about you or Barnes_ , but there’s only so much lying she can do, only so much she can force her body to suffer through.

Steve’s face is slightly confused, but mostly it’s gentle, _too gentle_ , and it makes her hands fist with the urge to punch him.

“Toni—”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Rogers. Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m not bringing them back.” He does, he stares, and still, all she can see is stuff she doesn’t want to examine.

“It might not be up to you.”

And that is perhaps the cruelest thing he could answer with, he knows that. Because Toni doesn’t deal well with not being able to solve a problem, with having to concede control over an outcome. Because the possibility—the _probability_ —of Steve being right… she doesn’t want to examine that either.

She can’t think about what to reply with that isn’t an uppercut to his jaw, but he saves her from having to respond to that at all when he says, “And I don’t know what you think Bucky and I would _do or not do_ after this or even why you brought that up, but I hardly think it changes anything.”

She snorts, doesn’t even try to rein it in. “Yeah, sure, okay. Whatever you say, Cap.”

“What does that even _mean_?”

“Are you really that fucking repressed?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Nothing. It means nothing.”

Sighing, Steve says, “Can never get a straight answer from you, can I?” and it irks her that she is always the one at fault.

“You want a straight answer? Fine. That bullshit you pulled on me? You never would have done that to Barnes. You never would have left _Bucky_ in a miserable HYDRA bunker in the middle of fucking _Siberia_ , _alone_ , with no protection, no backup, no escape route.” Steve frowns, her heart races, and she wants, _desperately_ , to not say this, but her blood _boils_ and it’s been _so long_ yet _not long enough_. “It doesn’t matter that it was me that day—you would have done the same to Wilson, to Romanoff, to Carter. _Either_ Carter,” and that hits him, makes him recoil, “As long as _Bucky_ is fine, the rest of the world can fuck off.”

Steve’s face is impassive, like he’s pondering an insubstantial problem, like he’s figuring out how to appease a child.

“You’re here,” is what he settles on.

Amidst her bafflement, she spares a brief moment to question for how long exactly that will remain true.

It’s another of those responses she doesn’t see coming. Steve is so nice, so puppy-like most of the time, that she often forgets how unreservedly ruthless he can be.

She can always recall the shape of his fist, but sometimes, when she wants to, she can forget the feel of it.

“ _That’s_ what you took from my speech? That you left me to die and I _didn’t_?”

“I didn’t leave you to _die_ ,” he makes it sound like an absurdity, like a reprimand for being _childish_ in her exaggeration, “You had the suit.”

This time, it’s her who recoils, looks at him bewildered, as if trying to make sure she heard correctly.

When she objects, the words are slow to get past her clenched teeth. “You _destroyed_ the suit. You _smashed the arc reactor with your shield_.”

His jaw is tightened too, his fingers folding closed and extending out again, and it’s hilarious, really, in the worst possible way, that it is in _this_ that they can match each other.

“ _You’re here_ ,” he repeats tensely.

“I’m starting to think you regret that.”

Another sigh, another condescending glance. “No, but you’re _here_. Whatever happened to the suit, you made it out.”

There’s something coiling at the pit of her stomach, winding up, up, up, beginning to slither towards her chest for her to process it, to see it, to _understand_.

She’s sure, already, that she doesn’t want to.

“No thanks to you,” Toni snarks back, and whatever she had expected, Steve’s shoulders loosen a fraction as he nods gravely.

“Exactly.”

His tone is final, like he thinks that’s supposed to explain everything, but all it does is confuse her more, make the thing inside her curl tighter.

“Exactly _what_? Exactly you’re finally accepting the damage you did?”

Frowning, Steve explains, “No, I mean—You—Genius, billionaire, playgirl, philanthropist, right? _Always a way out_.”

His expression, his tone, is anguished, willing her to understand, to get on the same page as him, and _oh_ , she does.

She does, and she hates it. Precisely like she predicted she would.

All of her life. Her _entire_ _life_ , she’s fought for this, fought to prove herself, fought to earn the name, _the legacy_ , that her father gave her.

Everything she’d ever wanted, and it comes back to bite her on the ass.

Toni stares at him wordlessly, digesting his words, then she’s retracting the nanobots and striding closer yet to him until their clothed, _unarmored_ chests are almost brushing against each other.

Apart from the night before with Rhodey, it’s the first time she is exposed since coming back from space.

“Hit me.”

He doesn’t expect it, obviously, tries to step back only to have her step forward again.

“What?”

“ _Hit me_.”

Steve looks appalled, scandalized at what he can’t believe she’s trying to suggest.

“Come on, Rogers. Hit me.”

She understands, but he doesn’t, like he can’t acknowledge his own faulty rationalization.

“Toni, what are you even talking about? I’m not hitting you.”

“Do it. Hit me.”

“For God’s sake, I’m not hitting you,” she can’t see because her gaze is focused on his face, but from the strain in his voice, she imagines his hands are curled into taut fists, “why would I even do that?”

Toni is shorter, so much shorter than him, but she tilts her chin up, squares her shoulders, glares at him provokingly. Recalls the mocking way he spoke to her that day and eases her mouth into a slight smirk.

“Bring out the shied. Let’s go a few rounds.”

His face draws into a horrified sort of shock that fills her with a bitter satisfaction that feels wholly insufficient. Steve looks a little like he did when she told him about Ultron, when she told him about Wanda. He looks a little like he can’t believe he’s reached this level of disappointment.

Her insides are all jumbled up into a painful mess, her atoms ripped apart slowly by the black hole, the void at her center, _right below where the shield hit_ , and her mind replays the sound of it in time with the erratic rhythm of her damaged heart.

It takes him a moment to respond, but he does mumble, “that’s not fair.”

It pulls a mad bark of laughter out of her, twice as disbelieving as he is. “You need to get off your moral high horse a-s-a-p, Cap.”

“I’m not—”

She’s _so tired_ , so _done_ with him denying everything. Whatever mistakes she has made over the years, Toni has made the effort to recognize them, to try to make up for them, to give out reparations.

All she has gotten in return is a _letter_.

“Hit me or say it, or we are over forever, Rogers.”

Her chest burns cold, sucking in photons and freezing her slowly, and her arm aches dully, itching to be numbed, and maybe it’s just her mind, but she feels like the tremors going through her are trying to shake her out of her broken body.

“I won’t hit you.”

Once upon a time, when she was young and naïve, Toni liked to believe she would grow up to be someone whom Captain America would be proud of.

“Then say it.”

The biggest problem isn’t that. It’s that ultimately, her own standards raised to resembles his.

When she disappoints him, she disappoints herself.

Steve’s face is a devastating mix of anger and disappointment, sad and miserable even under the glare of the sun. Toni thinks that whatever comes next in this fucked up intergalactic war, this is the last time they will see each other.

They will pass one another, exchange words, fight _together_ , but this is the last time they will look at each other and think, _I know you._

Maybe they never really thought that. Maybe she wanted to and convinced him to try as well.

Maybe they never saw each other. Maybe there’s always been a cowl and a faceplate between them, a layer of ice and a cloud of sand.

Against his tanned skin, Steve’s eyes are blue, blue, _only blue_ , she can’t see the green.

“Because you’re Toni Stark,” says Steve, and it is the exact moment the Doras use their spears to push them apart, the exact moment Rhodey comes looking for her, the exact moment the sky darkens.

The void stretches, and Toni becomes a black hole.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://demigodscum.tumblr.com/)


End file.
